Page 24 of The Gods Will Sing Our Song

Who is this man? How can he glow like an earthbound star? The man extends his hands out over the creek. The water starts to froth. Bubbles swirl and roll their way to the top, where they gurgle and pop. Moonlight dances through them until the creek is as riotous as the sky above. “I summon you!” the man cries.

I glance almost desperately at Ren, suddenly certain I’m imagining everything. His eyes are as wide as mine are. My deer grows warmer.

A trout emerges from the font. The man snatches it with the speed and accuracy of a striking viper. It’s like a piece of the moon, silvery and shiny in his grip—and he is, too, just as silvery and shiny. Lips part to show pointed teeth. Every single one is an eyetooth meant for tearing.

As he bites off the fish’s head, dark liquid skims across the silvery scales. Blood. Delicate bones, interlocked like roots, emerge from where the head used to be, along with fleshy meat and torn scales. He spits out the head and tosses the fish’s body back into the creek, where the current carries it away.

Next to the man, a fountain springs up. I’m dazed, terrified, and confused. I’m seeing something I don’t comprehend. Otōsan always spoke of magic and its deep wells that run through the generations of our family because of our service to the gods. For the first time, it has spilled into my life. I don’t know whether to fear or embrace it.

Impossibly, the fountain builds, growing taller and bubblier. The man’s hands guide it up, as though it’s drawn on invisible, magical strings. The water swirls away from the creek rocks and into the funnel. Pebbles, tumbled smooth, are exposed, shiny, wet, and slick.

The man’s shadow suddenly rises, animating like it did before. This time, it stretches up and splits into dozens of long arms with even longer fingers. Whatever power the man has over the water fails. The spouting arch of water plunges back into the riverbed. It crashes up over the sides and over the man. He lets out a growl of rage. The unbound water rushes downward to us. Tossing his head back, he cries to the moon, “Will even the wastes of Yomi deny me?”

I step back. A twig snaps under my foot.

The shadowy hands disappear. The man’s head turns toward us. I shrink back against Ren. The man—god, whatever he is—glides in our direction. Darkness fills his eye sockets so that there’s no white, only blackness and an amber horizontal dash of a pupil. The glow of his skin becomes more brilliant. It has as much icy blue in it as whitish silver. And I smell him. Smoky incense mixes with the strongest notes of rose and jasmine that I have ever inhaled, along with an odd wetness, as though he’s taken on the scent of water itself. Under it all is the smell of fish. Stringy bits of trout hang from his mouth and speckle his chin.

“I think we should run,” Ren says breathlessly, his arm protectively wrapping around my shoulder.

“Wait—” The man gets closer. I lose my courage. “Let’s go!”

We turn and run. Brushy ground spins away beneath my feet and I think he’s right upon us. Scabrous rocks whirl by. Ren keeps pace beside me. I hear a howl that sounds neither human nor animal. The world bounces around me with every jolting step, but I dare to glance over my shoulder.

The man hasn’t followed us.

Instead, he’s a glowing smudge by the creek. He’s arched backward, hands out at his sides as though in offering, neck tilted so far back his head is almost parallel to his shoulders. From his throat comes a wordless howl. It’s loud in volume but bass in octave, so much so that it sounds like a finger striking the lowest note on a piano, over and over.

Even after he’s obscured from sight and the howl doesn’t reach us anymore, the sound replays in my head. I don’t think it’ll ever stop. No matter where I go from now on, a splinter of this night—of seeing the man and his wonders—will come with me, glowing beneath my skin like an electrified vein.

Chapter Seven

Ren

Dusty ground crunches under my feet as I walk down the firebreak the morning after Violet and I went to the creek. I’m on practical business—to find a job, keep my eyes peeled for the man from the creek—but Violet keeps slinking through my mind like a damn shape-shifter. I’m exhausted and should be worrying about Emi or puzzling over the bizarre man from last night, but I keep getting sucker punched by memories of Violet shimmying under the fence like some kind of ballerina turned thief. She doesn’t belong in my head, where my thoughts are like lights blinking by on the freeway, rapid, sharp, either vaguely or keenly angry. But she’s there, emerging from my tangled thoughts, reordering everything inside my head.

I spent time with her at the creek. This is the cost.

A raging infatuation.

Which is fantastic. I grip my fox and force myself to search the passing faces for the man from the creek.

Whoever he is, he has some kind of power. Maybe he can help Emi in some way. After all, I saved that wooden box of his on the bus. I’m not one to hold things over people, but if it gives me any sort of leverage, I’ll play that tune like a jukebox full of newly released records. I keep my head on a swivel as I walk, hoping he’ll appear. But the more I search, the more I realize just how big the camp is and how many people are trapped here.

If he doesn’t appear, I’ll just have to do what I can—earn enough money so I can bribe a guard in case there’s something Emi needs.

I move briskly as the sun burns off the nighttime cold. I’ve thrown away my sling, despite Mr. Nomura’s warnings, so I’ll look fit for work. Construction occurs almost everywhere, the camp stretching and rising around us, delivery, supply, and military trucks roaring in and out. A lot of it is the WRA making sure the barracks are finished and adding spaces to accommodate the school, a library, rec rooms, and supplies. But while they build structures in militant, monotonous gray from knothole-filled planks, I notice there’s another type of construction, designed and executed solely by us. Across the way, in a grove of cottonwoods, workers lift traditional Japanese sliding panels onto a structure to make a dojo. Others pack down clay from the Owens River to make sporting courts so each barrack can have one for tennis, basketball, or volleyball.

Several gardens are being planted, and I go to the biggest one because I figure they’ll need the most help. It’s busy, full of workers and different projects. President Roosevelt wants us to grow victory gardens for the war effort, but it’s clear this garden is going be a lot more than a vegetable patch. Saplings in buckets sit in flatbed trucks. A large hole is dug for a pond and wood soaks in tubs so it can be bent. More lumber forms a seven-foot arch—a bridge? Sticks are bound together with twine to make walking path rails. I’m not surprised. In Los Angeles, Japanese men did most of the landscaping, and now they’re using their expertise here. All the lawns and gardens back home have probably died. One can hope.

I approach the man giving orders.

“What?” he asks me.

“I’d like to work. I can do anything.”

He stares at me blankly. What is apparently the extent of his English. I point to myself and then to the other workers. He grabs my hands and frowns, shaking his head at the scab on my palm. Little does he know that I’m biting the inside of my cheek to hide the pain he’s causing my shoulder. I pull my hands back and point to the workers and myself again. He lets out a huffy, impatient sigh, but he finally gestures to a rusty pickax and a hardscrabble patch of earth. I bow in thanks. Snatch up the pickax.

I’m not in the best condition for the task, as the man suspected. The ache in my shoulder turns into teeth-clenching pain when I lift the pickax and drive it into the dirt, where it catches on the underside of a large rock. Wresting the pickax free tears open the abrasion on my palm from holding the fox too tight. I try to adjust my grip, but it doesn’t help. I manage to get the rock free. Relying on my left arm but not my left hand, I awkwardly carry it over to a nearby pile and dump it. It lands with a dull thud. I’m a mess. Screwed-up left hand, screwed-up right shoulder.